


On the sunny side of the street

by ihmesusi



Category: Tennis no Oujisama | Prince of Tennis
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-06-03
Updated: 2015-06-03
Packaged: 2018-04-02 17:15:55
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Underage
Chapters: 1
Words: 7,934
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4068091
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ihmesusi/pseuds/ihmesusi
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>There's no way they don't know or at least guess at what's going on. The question is what to do about it.</p>
            </blockquote>





	On the sunny side of the street

**Author's Note:**

> Written for the Spring Tenipuri Exchange 2015. The prompt was bickering college roommates, or so I gathered from it, haha. A sort of get-together fic. I approached the prompt in parts, so this is more like a compilation of drabbles, following a certain timeline. There was a part that felt a little disjointed but Niru fixed it for me~

Most fairytales have the same kind of plot. A cliché person meets a very cliché person, there’s a witch, they run into trouble, fall in love, conquer all and live happily ever after. There’s usually no more than a year between the meeting and the marrying, which seems like a long time on a paper but really isn’t in real life.

Now then, try imagining you’ve been stuck with this person for a long time. The meeting that sealed your fate was in kiddie tennis when you were six. The trouble you faced wasn’t because of a witch, though it would be much nicer to say you hurt your best friend seriously because you were cursed - that it was a witch who stole away half of his sight and not your stupid pride. It also wasn’t a dragon who separated you but his pride which was anyday as stupid as yours but much more understandable considering the circumstances.

So many things happened during the rest of the year - and the one after that - and still it was as if no time had passed when Kippei faced Chitose in their last Nationals tournament. It should’ve been like a slap in the face as they had made a stupid oath in their first Nationals - to take on Rikkaidai’s amazing super-trio every year, side by side - but things had definitely changed between them. Their match was like pieces of a puzzle coming together.

“How’s your eye?” Chitose had asked after everything was over.

“Not as bad as yours,” he answered and received a reaction that was better described as an angry sounding half-word. He smiled, feeling remorse but not regret. There was nothing that hurt as much as hurting your best friend, even if eye for an eye was highly exaggerated here.

 

Their story moved on, bringing them together again in high school where Chitose didn’t join the tennis club anymore. It was Kippei’s turn to click his tongue angrily - a habit he never learned out of, afterwards. They still played against each other because no matter what, Chitose couldn’t let go of their chosen sport completely.

“Mm, it’d feel like letting go of Kippei. I don’t want to do that.”

“Why not? I mean, please let go of me, you lazy bastard,” was what Kippei answered with a huff but in truth the words made him hope for the future. A bit. Lying in the lush green grass, Chitose gave him a huge toothy grin, like the Cheshire cat.

“Nope. You do it if you think you can handle life without me.” 

 

The magical kiss of love that heals any ills was a wet smooch straight on his mouth after a street game against some random adults. They won and Chitose who hadn’t played in a while was definitely hyped enough to do something so stupid. Yet the way he grabbed Kippei’s head with both hands and bent down to plant one on him still caught him by surprise. He didn’t notice the guy picking up his figurative heart on the ground and putting it in the pocket of his tennis shorts but he sure felt the effect.

 

University college was where Kippei started believing in happy-hell-ever-after. They never talked about their chosen next stages, so it was a surprise at least to him to have the dorm manager show him to his room and inside was, well Chitose. Huge feet and all.

“Give me a moment and I'll get the boxes out of your way,” he was told, like there was nothing strange with fate bringing them together again. Had Kippei asked, the guy would most likely have answered with something round-about like having seen it in a dream or other bull.

Kippei let his friend close the door between them and stood in the corridor, adding another Chitose-colored ring to the imaginary tree of his life. He'd thought about it before but it had to be true: He couldn't lose Chitose even if he tried. 

There was no way he wouldn't be happy about it.

The happy feeling passed when he was finally let into the room and looked around.

“So which one is my bed?” he asked pointedly, looking at the boxes on one bed and the person on the other.

Chitose grinned but didn't move a finger.

“Nice to see you too, Kippei.”

 

*

 

They weren’t together as in lovers but that wasn’t an issue. They were still together as in best mates, roommates, whatever mates. Who cared if there wasn’t any _mating_ there? As some specialist in Ann’s magazines-for-fools said: _Friends last longer than lovers_. In Chitose’s case that seemed to be it. Kippei never bothered figuring out which team he was actually batting for and anyway, dating while having tons of tennis and studying to do didn’t seem worth it.

Living together with someone who figured out he batted for all the teams and seemed to still be very popular in - and out - the student body was Hell personified. People called Chitose a freak behind his back and often to his face but his carefree way of dealing with that and his ability to kick serious ass (figuratively) when he was pushed over the edge - and maybe a little because he hung around with Kippei - put him above bullying or being estranged. Kippei really admired that.

But when he woke in the middle of the night to Morikawa Natsuki’s pleasant low voice singing _Lullaby of Birdland_ , for the fifth time in one month, he was ready to strangle the genius he shared his dorm room with. 

“Chitose, I swear to God I’ll kill you,” he groaned into his pillow and was rewarded with a drunken little giggle.

“Just a few songs, hey. I’m just really happy right now.”

 _Go be happy in your girlfriend’s room_ , was what he wanted to say, but saying it had no effect on this idiot. He’d tried it in the past. Chitose turned into a selfish prick when he drank, happy one or not.

“I’m so glad I came back to Kippei tonight,” the idiot continued, going steadily around in the cleaner part of the room. Kippei didn’t need to open his eyes to follow what he was doing. Sleep was gone, anyway, leaving him cranky with his head full of a song that was a bitch to get rid of. 

“Well I’m not,” he growled. “Couldn’t you have stayed away? Even for one night?”

“Haha, you’re glad too, Kippei. You’re just too shy to say it.” 

A sound of the fridge opening. Pop of a can opener. Chitose was drinking pocari before going to sleep. Tonight it would only be those couple of songs he had promised. Kippei thought he could live with that even if he would be sure to take his revenge someway, someday. _Eye for an eye._

“Yeah,” he groaned again, making a show of pushing his head under the pillow to hide from the noise. “I’m so happy I could hang myself just to be able to sleep when you’re around.”

Another laugh, this one low and resonating.

“You just don’t know good music.”

As if on a cue, the track changed and Morikawa Natsuki sang _Just the two of us_. Kippei swallowed his retort and just clicked his tongue. 

Cranky with being awakened in the middle of sleep was only a part of the reason he was acting out, even if it was the reasonable part. The other part was Chitose once again hitting the nail dead-on with his drunken words. Had the guy not come back, Kippei would’ve spent his week wondering if he’d had sex with his girlfriend. Things like, in what position would Chitose do it? Was he the type to skip foreplay and dive straight to business? Would he take his time? What faces did he make? Or would he just lay back and make his partner do everything?

He’d done it before. Just because he didn’t put much value on having sex didn’t mean he didn’t think about it at all. 

 

*

 

According to the popular belief, Senri liked getting drunk. It wasn’t quite true though. What he liked was the certain giddiness brought by Mother Nature’s gift to American natives. The happiness creeping up behind him and wrapping her warm, loving arms around his every pore. In other words, pot. Alcohol just wasn’t his thing - not counting some fun social events a person was actually expected to drink at - and Kippei didn’t really mean it when he complained about having to share the room with a junkie.

It didn’t mean he didn’t like watching Kippei get drunk. His best friend had turned from a responsible wild beast into a boring guy during their experiences in different middle schools but when he got drunk he let it go. Kippei without a bravado - a melancholy Kippei that reached out to him to be comforted in a serious, comfortable Kippei-way - was the best. To get his dose of that side Senri needed to drink with him. 

Kippei didn’t like drinking alone.

“Weed doesn’t leave blanks,” he said, weaving his fingers into Kippei’s bedhead. They were sitting next to each other on the floor, leaning their backs to the blonde’s bed. “And it doesn’t make me sick. I don’t like hangovers.”

The more serious one of the two lifted his head from his shoulder and reached out for his can. There was a frown between his eyes. 

“Then don’t get wasted. Just get drunk, a little.” 

No matter what, to Senri’s ears it sounded like Kippei had said: _What’s wrong with a hangover?_ The guy was like that. Every good thing needed to have its dark side, otherwise it was too suspicious. While he could be convinced into trying out Senri’s stash, he still wasn’t convinced his plants were healthier than honest beer that left him throwing up in the morning. Since there was nothing Senri could do to convince him, he let it go, though pot-smoking Kippei was really cute too.

“There’s no little when you’re pouring,” he whined affectionately, forcing Kippei to stay in his slightly crouched position by leaning on his back. He wasn’t pushed away even if the frown between the serious black eyes deepened.

“Fine. Okay. I’m the reason you drink too much. Yes yes, my bad.”

“No need to take it so hard, Kippei,” Senri murmured against the yellow shirt. Burnt yellow, not bright. Like dandelions. It fit the guy, and smelled like him. Senri drew in Kippei’s scent when he breathed. “I love being drunk with you.”

There were number of ways to tell he was being loved in a shy way. One of them was that Kippei no longer called him out for saying gay things or said Shitenhouji had turned him into a sparkling fairy. Of course they weren’t in high school and they had learned to appreciate the people they had grown into while their paths had diverged, but this was Kippei. This guy complained about anything and everything, just to find something to say to him when they were alone.

What Kippei really meant by saying those things was: _You’ve grown into a confident person and I like it._ Or at least, Senri wanted him to mean that. 

He finally let Kippei up and noticed the way his eyes fixed onto his feet. 

“My socks. You suck.”

“They’re so comfy. Mine are full of holes.”

“Buy new ones,” his friend advised him. He shook his head and leaned his forehead lightly on Kippei’s broad shoulder. The blonde emptied the can in his hand in one go. “Bottoms up!” he announced with a burp.

The thing with Kippei was that when he drank he tried to get drunk as fast as possible. It also made him all the sicker in the end but it was his way. Senri sometimes wondered if he loved the same way. Kippei’s _Bottoms up!_ got a new meaning and Senri couldn’t help but chortle at it.

He needed to catch up so he opened a new can and poured it into a glass. Beer was pretty to look at even if it tasted bad. Against the lamplight it was like honey or amber.

“It’s not going to drink itself,” Kippei said and Senri took a sip to placate his friend. The taste always got better the more he drank. It had something to do with his tastebuds getting numb.

For the next ten minutes or so they just drank, each in their own little worlds. Senri wondered if Kippei was thinking about someone special or if he was already drunk enough to sleep with his eyes open. Mostly he thought about how Kippei didn’t really go out much and that he was the only one who got special treatment from this guy. Aside from his sister and maybe that team of little brothers from middle school. 

He thought it was funny how Kippei thought of him as the queer one when he had his own damn cult in Fudomine. Even cuter was how his friend thought it was all normal to have six younger guys calling out his name like he were the Buddha, or at least a god, so he never brought it up. Even when they argued.

Senri breathed deeply, and Kippei’s hair got into his nose. He blew it away and his friend shuddered awake from whatever he was doing.

“You smell nice,” he said at the same time Kippei said with sad air around him:  
“I’ve missed out.”

The awkward moment when they tried to figure out which one of them had the first dip into the conversation made Senri wish he hadn’t opened his mouth yet. Kippei seemed to be coming from somewhere really deep there, and so he had all rights to be curious. Then the blonde opened his mouth again and Senri wanted to whoop a little. 

But Kippei just said:

“Thanks. Must be the girly shampoo you bought.”

 _If it’s girly why are you using it?_ was right on his tongue but he didn’t say it. Starting an argument with Kippei when the guy fit just right under his arm and didn’t mind his hand rubbing circles on his chest would’ve been wasting a good atmosphere. Instead he said amiably:

“It’s not girly. It’s cheap.”

Recession having its toll on everything from the price of rice to student loans, Kippei never argued against the word _cheap_. As his friend relaxed against him, Senri found himself pitying the Kippei-fanclub from Fudomine. All but one of them could never even dream of holding him like this. They just weren’t tall enough.

“Anyway, you’re not a dog. Stop sniffing me like a pervert.” Kippei was all harsh words and respectable walls, all hiding the sweet softie he was. During his time with the queer folk of Shitenhouji, he’d really missed this guy. He remembered spying on his games at Kantou because he’d been worried they wouldn’t meet again at the Nationals. Or something. It had turned into a snarkfest, though.

Senri wasn’t into snarkfests anymore. He could still shoot with the best of them but it was harder to be honest and straightforward. He liked challenges, especially when Kippei did it so well.

“Why should I? You smell like bananas.”

“It’s gay and I don’t want to be gay right now.”

He had to let go a little to be able to tip his head back and laugh aloud. Kippei was treating his gayness like a mood! It was so funny. As funny as gay being the synonym for happy, and Kippei practically saying he didn’t want to be happy. No, that was a sad thought. Senri grew serious. _Missed out on what, Kippei?_ He wished alcohol didn’t kill Kippei’s already too few brain-cells and make him so forgetful that he started a topic and then left it hanging. That was the worst thing to do.

As revenge he decided to call Kippei out on his words. This time.

“I'm going to pretend you didn't just come out to me,” he said, with an entirely too satisfied tone. The scandalous look on Kippei’s face was so worth it.

“Wait- what?”

“In this context, you can’t use gay as the equivalent for happiness, even if in your case it might be that.”

“I don’t follow.”

The blonde reached out for the glass which was closer to him than the paperbag full of beer on Senri’s other side. The tall man caught his hand by the wrist and smirked.

“Beer will only make this harder for you. Let me rephrase that. When you’re gay there’s no way to switch it off. You’re gay or you’re not. Yoda.”

“Yoda didn’t say anything about LGBT people,” Kippei said, looking drunkishly angry about being denied his alcohol. “Where’s your open mind, Chitose? I can be whatever I want to be.”

“Yes and you’re gay.”

“That’s not confirmed information,” his friend argued stubbornly. “You can’t print that in your thesis.”

“Okay,” Senri amended peacefully but still needed to have one last stab in: “Have you ever got it up for a woman, seriously?”

Kippei didn’t appreciate it and it showed. For a moment he thought maybe he’d pushed a bit too far but then the guy looked down at his hand that still rested comfortably on his chest. As if he’d just noticed it.

“If I hadn’t, I would admit to being gay, you birdbrain. You didn’t hide from me, so why would I hide from you?”

It was so cute, and something he would only have said while drunk. With this Senri knew better than ever before just how deep their friendship went. For both of them. Maybe it was the alcohol but he got very emotional. Maybe even a little aroused. He leaned forward and gathered his friend into a tight embrace with both his arms around him.

“You just sealed your eternity with me,” he mumbled. “With this Kippei-sniffing pervert.”

Hands came awkwardly around him and Kippei patted his back.

“Yeah. I don’t mind being stuck with you.”

 

Needless to say the morning after reeked of vomit and beer. As Senri flopped down on his bed feeling absolutely foul, he remembered they had talked about some seriously deep shit, but what they had concluded as Kippei’s actual sexuality - well, maybe it just wasn’t that important. Labels usually worked against people instead of for them, and Kippei, being totally harmless, wouldn’t take the bullying that came with being an open queer person too well. 

Maybe it was best to leave it until it mattered.

 

*

 

Tennis was an important part of Kippei. 

So important that the first time he held a tennis racket still came to his dreams sometimes. It was in a thrift store and he was five. The racket was old and made of wood and the head was smaller than what he had seen on TV. When he asked about it, his mom said it’s because everything is bound to get bigger and better with time. 

Kippei had looked at the windows they passed on their way home and wondered if it meant they’d get to shop in real stores in the future. His mom used to look a little embarrassed when she stepped into a second-hand store.

What his mom had said, or rather the way the words _bigger_ and _better_ had fit together had molded his young way of thinking back then. When they had met for the first time, Chitose had been around the same height as him. When he hit his growth spurt which probably still continued to this day, Kippei was so jealous of his height that he stopped talking to him at times and then cried about it at home.

He got mostly over it when his mom taught him another way of looking at things. _You’re only as tall as your heart will let you be and only as small as the world will make you seem._ Then later in his last year of middle school he had met people of his age who played with wooden rackets. It hadn’t seemed to him that Fudoumine won because their racket heads were bigger. It just depended on the player.

He liked that. That’s why he couldn’t stop playing tennis again when Chitose stepped down from that career path. Doing it once had nearly ripped his heart out, even if the feeling behind his pretentious nobility of action back then had somewhat lessened the impact. He still played here in the University College tennis club. He was dead-into trying to catch some sponsor’s eye.

The Bigger equals Better -thing was so far in the past that he was surprised when Chitose brought it up one late afternoon, when he came back to the dorm after a nice match against a tough senpai.

“Hey,” Chitose called out lazily from where he was lounging on Kippei’s bed. 

Again.

He was reading manga from Kippei’s small collection of classics. The blonde university student let his bag fall on the floor with a pleased huff and closed the door behind him. “Remember when in junior high you used to say bigger was better?”

Kippei did remember having said something of the sort but he couldn’t recall any particular situation. Chitose being the genius he was probably did. Then again, genius was only a hair's breadth away from a freak.

He took off his tracksuit jacket and threw it on top of his shoes and tennis bag. He’d find it when he needed to go out again. The room was too warm with two people in it to wear anything extra. “I was probably jealous of your height. I used to be that a lot.”

“Yeah, something like that.” 

Living in a dorm was supposed to be a break from a nosy sister and well-meaning but overbearing parents. He wasn’t really ready to live on his own but his dad had a notorious track-record in being assigned to different cities at almost yearly pace, and so Kippei wanted a stable place to study and enjoy his last years of youth before a boring ass job, in case he never caught any sponsor’s eye. 

That wouldn’t happen. Probably. Today’s match had been greatly satisfying. Kippei was almost certain there was nothing Chitose could do to ruin his day.

Living in the same room with his best friend had been really driving him up the wall lately. Kippei didn’t want to go as far as to say things would be better without the other around but as someone who needed time for himself to regroup his thoughts and to reload his people-persona for the next day, who needed to sleep on top of that, Kippei had been itching for a chance to fight it out for days.

“Why are you on my bed?” he asked after a while, having failed to communicate the same with his body-language. Chitose’s shrugged as if it didn’t matter. “No, really. I need my space. You go and invade yours.”

“Can’t.”

Kippei started counting slowly in his head. If he were Chitose, he would probably have counted primary numbers or decimals of pi or something. He was a genius with numbers after all. Kippei wasn’t Chitose though, and so he just counted down from fifty. 

He looked over at Chitose’s bed, accusing it and the six hundred books on it for ruining his good mood. 

Chitose’s side of the room was in perfect order as a contrast to Kippei’s side, that was a carefully controlled chaos. The invisible line splitting the room was as visible as night and day. It was highlighted by a pair of socks, a t-shirt and yellow boxers with little apes on them, carefully pushed back into his side. 

While the taller guy’s side was always in order, it was the lack of dust that alarmed Kippei to Chitose’s state of mind. While Shitenhouji had released a whole lot of sparkling rainbow power in his friend, the change of schools and the new team he’d joined had definitely done positive things to his psyche. The Chitose he’d parted from had carried a lot more damage than just the physical one to his eye. A lot more.

He still got frustrated at times and it was usually shown as attention to unnecessary detail, such as cleaning an already clean enough room. Kippei wondered what was going on and if it was somehow his fault. After all, Senri was showing off by still pretending to read. 

“You cleaned,” he tried fishing for an answer because he just couldn’t be the guy who asked: _Hey what’s up with you? Did someone say something to you? Do you need help kicking ass?_ It would’ve been insulting, considering Chitose was written with the same kanji as the Imperial Navy’s cruiser bearing the same name. They were very similar. Calm on the surface but packing hell of a fire power.

“Mmhm.”

“What’s up with that? OCD much?”

“As if.”

No. Today had been a good day. He refused to let whatever was bothering Chitose bother him as well. If the neat piles of books on the other’s bed were the reason he couldn’t occupy his own… Kippei cracked his knuckles vengefully and started knocking the piles over. 

When he was done he looked over at his roommate only to find him paying no attention to the noise he was making. The victorious grin died and he jumped over the books to get to the guy.

“Hey, I took care of your problem,” he said, feeling stupid. If Chitose didn’t wake up from his indifference and one-worded answers, Kippei was going to boil alive. “The manga is upside down, you big oaf.”

“Exactly,” Chitose said suddenly, dropping the book in his lap. Kippei decided to just be glad he managed to say something to rouse the other. “I’m big right?”

“What? Yeah.” _And stupid._

“Probably bigger than anyone you’ll come across in the future.”

Chitose’s eyes were intense as they peered up at him from under a messy mop of hair. It was as if they were saying: _Figure it out already!_ Kippei couldn’t for the life of him humor the guy. They’d been rivals and friends since they’d met in kiddy tennis but Chitose was and had always been a crazy scientist to Kippei, even when they were both seriously going at each other. Before stuff. 

The more the point of this conversation kept avoiding him, the more frustrated he became. The only way to get his head around it was to think but how could he get any serious thinking done when this guy was invading his space and waiting? 

“Shut up. Stop making fun of me. Give me my bed back.”

Today’s Chitose was like an open book and the moment the words left his mouth Kippei could see they hurt. He justified himself fast before he gave up in the face of his friend’s stubbornness and left the room. It was his bed. Chitose had no right to hold it hostage in this memory game he was playing. He clicked his tongue and glared right back. The guy should’ve known better.

Finally, Chitose got up. He passed Kippei unnecessary close and didn’t trip over the books covering his side of the floor. He said nothing, yet for the rest of the evening Kippei couldn’t stop being aware of him in different way than before. It sucked.

In the end he couldn’t concentrate on his homework. There was a dark stare on his back. He didn’t feel too bad abandoning the books though, considering he was never one to find studying fun. It was just something he was supposed to do. Ignoring the stare was supposed to be an act of defiance but it was starting to get to him instead. Fighting with Chitose sucked because all their fights were ultimately started by him. It sucked because hurting the guy backlashed and hurt him instead. Why did he always forget about it until he did it again?

Kippei reached out to grab Immortal Blade from his shelf and tried to concentrate on it instead of his friend but in the end it seemed he wasn’t in the mood for worms either.

He sneaked a glance at Chitose only to find he wasn’t staring anymore. He was seemingly sleeping with his back to the room. Kippei couldn’t help a guilty flinch. Just how many years had they known each other? Couldn’t Chitose just come out and say whatever was bothering him? If it had something to do with Kippei they could work on it. Surely.

He sighed and threw the manga on the shelf. It teetered on the edge but didn’t fall, thankfully. He still had it in him.

Right, memory lane. Straightforward questions. _Let’s stop fighting._

“Why did you bring it up?” he asked, turning on his side so he could look at the wide back of his best friend. Chitose didn’t move but the air changed a bit. As he’d suspected, the guy wasn’t sleeping after all. “Or more like, why get stuck on something that I said ages ago? Couldn’t you have picked something more recent?”

Silence answered his words but it seemed like the tension was relaxing between them. Kippei hoped Chitose would turn around so he could see his face. The stupid face he’d grown up with.

When he took another breath to say something else, Chitose stopped giving him the silent treatment.

“I guess I was desperately clawing for something that might’ve been a come-on from you,” he said. “But Kippei doesn’t really say anything like that so I ended up going further back.”

The reason was so simple yet Kippei hadn’t seen it. He’d buried it under all the come-ons Chitose layered on him since coming out of the closet. They were close and everything had just sort of rolled off him, like water.

Kippei knew he’d thought about this sort of thing before but now that there was a chance, he wasn’t sure he wanted to take it. They were good as friends, even if Chitose drove him up the wall sometimes, most times. Disappearing on strolls in the middle of the week and waking him up in god-awful times. Eating his treats and reading his books and stealing his bed…

“Here’s a come-on,” he said a bit stiffly. “Turn around and tell me if you’re hitting on me right now.”

There was a voice in the back of his head, asking timidly what was it that made Chitose desperate enough to hit on him now. It was like hitting on your brother, without the incest factor, because even if things went wrong you knew you wouldn’t lose anything, because people didn’t get to choose their family.

Were Chitose’s countless dates and almost relationships getting to him now for some reason? Didn’t he always say he enjoyed being single and dating interesting people without strings attached?

There was a sound of shuffling sheets as Chitose turned around on his bed. 

“Hair,” he said.

“Hair?”

“Yeah, afro actually.” Chitose had a tentative smile on his face while seeming comically serious at the same time. “You had your jaw set in your best scowl and you said: _‘Bigger is better, right? Doesn’t take a genius to figure that out.’_ ”

“Oh.” Had it been anyone else - Anyone - he would’ve died from embarrassment. Like during the U-17 camp when Chitose told Kamio stuff that should’ve died with time. So much for letting bygones be bygones. “I was pretty cute.”

“Yeah. Really cute.”

“I was a kid though.”

“So you’re able to appreciate the smaller afro now?” Chitose teased him, though the sides of his lips were turning down. Kippei chuckled.

“I think I have sworn off afros altogether.”

“Aaww, I could’ve sworn you were growing your hair out again.”

He tugged at his slow-growing bangs and shook his head. 

“I couldn’t compete with your hair even in the best of mornings. Having a mane is different.”

“So you admit you were competing with me.” There was a delighted sort of laugh accompanying the statement and Kippei didn’t go denying it. He’d competed with Chitose in everything. Trivial and non-trivial matters.

They didn’t return to the original topic anymore. Kippei figured Chitose was just as unsure as he was about it and thought maybe it just wasn’t worth it. He did wonder what had brought it up in the first place. Weren’t they just fine the way they were right now?

There was no problem here for them to solve.

 

*

 

There were different levels to existence. It was all about perception, and how one chose to look at things. For example, an average man went through life with his eyes pretty much closed. It wasn’t all his fault because basically everything around him was coercing him to avoid things that would make him open them, from asking: _Do I really need this thing I’m told to buy? Am I really going to get happy with the choices I make? Aren’t I really just feeding my time, my precious one life to the illusion monster called society?_ Well, at least he was to be feeding Japan a lot longer than if he were go to Africa without money and get himself shot for being a foreigner (without money).

Then there were some people who asked the questions and still chose to live their life the same way anyway. They weren’t to be scorned, after all it was a personal choice. There were other choices, though. The road to an actual awakening was seeing everything and accepting everything. From Acceptance comes Understanding and Senri had always had this desire to understand random shit. He was a smart guy after all.

When he was a kid, he had liked the feeling he got when a difficult kanji suddenly opened up to him. Then, as an older kid in junior high, he had looked at Kippei’s freshly bleached hair and nodded. It was just as good as the black one, and looked pretty and sparkly in the sun. Life was about learning and Senri was happy with the course his life had taken, even if he’d paid some impossible prices to get here.

 

He was on a stroll. Had been since yesterday. Because Kippei made a big deal of his occasional wanderings, he’d even emailed him and said he was going somewhere to find himself. But it wasn’t exactly himself he wanted to find as he didn’t remember losing himself. He had found a faster route from the campus to the station, that only required cutting through some bushes and climbing over a relatively high fence. 

Senri hadn’t needed to climb much. He’d just taken a hold of the top of the fence and pulled himself on top of it. Then jumped down. It was good to be a tall person.

There were other good points to being as tall as he was. His reach was wider than average and the view from high up was better. He also knew he could pin Kippei down when wrestling for a remote if absolutely needed. There wasn’t a TV in their room now though, and things hardly ever heated up as much when they shared the common room TV with other people.

A wet drop hit his nose and he looked up at the sky. The clear sky from this morning had cloaked itself to a shroud of clouds. No wonder he had hard time reading his new book of Sengoku-era poetry when the sun had decided to play hide and seek. Another drop landed on his cheek and he realised he needed to find shelter or he would get drenched in a minute.

He still needed to decide whether he wanted to play _Let’s search the sun_ but for now he pulled his hands from his pockets and ran. 

Once safe in a bicycle shelter at some random station he laughed at himself and watched with detached interest as other people reacted to the rain. Some simply opened their umbrellas, others started running only after the sky really opened up. Looked like the rainy season promised in the news was finally here, a day late. As always, Senri didn’t have an umbrella with him, even if his roommate had told him to take one with him.

An old saying was that the plum rains in the beginning of June begun to fall to keep a guest from leaving. He saw a couple trying to fit under the same umbrella and thought about how the rain brought people closer to each other physically. Yet that was only on the surface. If there was nothing underneath, the closeness dissipated when they reached the porch and said goodnight and thank you for the date.

This was the age of sexual freedom and because he had his family’s blessing and Kippei’s endless friendship to support him, he’d been able to grow into his multisexual identity. His best friend wasn’t even that wrong when he said Shitenhouji had turned him gay. Yet he’d rather say the relaxed and altogether accepting atmosphere during his last year of middle school had been nothing more than a catalyst to discovering himself.

The basic tendencies must have always been there. Young wild Kippei preferring bigger things to small was definitely a cute memory but Senri still remembered how his heart had throbbed back then. He remembered going into a small crisis over reacting that way to another boy, only to be saved by his parents who told him love doesn’t look at a gender - that his body would start reacting to weirder things than boys by the time his puberty would really hit.

They had been right, hadn’t they? Senri was happy to have been warned, unlike Kippei who sometimes got so wound up over his body-functions that it was strange he didn’t get an aneurysm in the tender age of 13. Even Senri had often felt like he wanted to be swallowed by the earth. He hadn’t yet obtained the sort of adult air of nonchalance that saved him from feeling embarrassment now. Even very inappropriate hard-ons were natural and he didn’t think they had to have anything to do with having dirty thoughts.

Some of his dates thought differently but that was their decision. 

The rain kept up its rhythmic drumming on the roof above. The air wasn’t too warm or too cold. There was no dust in the air, nor sand or pollution he liked to think. His thoughts cleared as he closed his eyes and just breathed. 

He’d been thinking about that evening for most of the week and felt answers just weren’t coming. His latest date had asked him if Kippei was his ex and said that if so it was wonderful how well they still got along. The guy had probably been fishing for answers but Senri had been in the mood when he took everything a little too seriously.

He had thought about Kippei and their friendship. He had thought about how the best part of any date was to come back to the dorm afterwards.

In fact, every time he would close the door of their cramped little room, he would feel relief. At ten o’clock Kippei was there. If he woke up he would lift his head from the pillow, give him a sleepy look and relax again. Sometimes Senri was careful not to wake him up, unable to stop smiling at Kippei’s impossible bedhead. Other times, more and more often lately, he would wake his friend up on purpose. The angry sleepy Kippei was as cute as the guy could get but that wasn’t the whole reason. He felt grounded and good when Kippei complained at him and then, eventually calmed down and said: _So you’re back. How was it?_

Then there was that other Kippei. The sweaty, feral predator he could be when he let himself go on a tennis court. The one who forced the shivers into Senri’s spine and made him overcome himself and his weaknesses. He was one happy guy to have experienced that. No matter what Kippei said, a half-blind guy wouldn’t make it in the pro-tennis world but Senri felt he didn’t need to get there.

There was so much more to life, as long as Kippei was there.

Senri laughed at himself and looked ahead at his long-stretched feet. An edge of Kippei’s striped sock was showing where his left shoe ended and the leg of his pants had pulled up. He was getting dangerously sappy about this. Saying he took a part of Kippei with him everywhere he went sounded a bit stalkerish. Maybe.

They had always been equal. Ever since they met in kiddy tennis they’d been improving at the same rate. There were feelings, doors he could’ve never opened if his opponent hadn’t been that guy. He knew it was the same for Kippei. It would’ve been so easy to translate all these feelings and thoughts into gay-love for his best friend but then again, they’d never been even close to deepening their bromance beyond that.

 

The rain eased around six p.m, only to start falling again around ten in the evening. By then Senri was already back at the dorm, watching as Kippei studied for his boring plan B.

“Did you find yourself?” the guy had asked him upon arrival and he’d shrugged.

“I found something else,” he answered, this time trying for the mysterious air Kippei often blamed him for. All he received for his effort was a roll of eyes.

Kippei bit the end of his pencil and Senri’s eyes watched the strong jaw move slightly with the action. He thought it was a shame the guy never dated. It was like wasting such a fine person. Kippei would be sure to treat a partner well and his fresh-bleached hair was really yellow in the lamplight, reaching his shoulders in the back of his neck.

Wait.

Senri jumped up from his bed and took a few fast steps to see closer. He tripped over pile of tennis magazines and ended up with his nose in Kippei’s nape. Well, almost.

“What the… Did you let a five-year-old cut your hair?”

A little left from the center, clearly visible now that Senri was this close, was a near horizontal line of ends. It was a screaming contrast to Kippei’s fashionable, longish boy-cut.

“No.”

There was a sound of a book closing and a squeak of the chair. He looked up to clouded black eyes. “It’s just hair,” his friend said, clearly on the defence. “It’ll grow back.”

“But it’ll be slooow.”

Senri turned Kippei’s chair back around to look at the shorter part again. He measured it with his fingers. Around five centimeters long. There was no way to unsee it. That’s how offensive it was.

“Couldn’t you have asked me to cut it for you?” he asked then, feeling tempted to keep touching the clean edge. It was like a wound in Kippei’s appearance. 

“I thought about it,” the guy said, having resigned himself to Senri’s inspection. “But then you didn’t come back and I wanted to do it myself.”

Senri smiled affectionately, flicking at the cut. In the process he managed to reveal more of Kippei’s nape.

“Didn’t find a hidden hairdresser in yourself?”

The nape was inviting him to kiss it. He was spellbound, staring at it with a dumb expression. This tiny show of vulnerability was really messing up their safe dynamics.

Kippei snorted.

“Says the guy who was looking for himself God knows where when he could just ask me.”

Senri pushed the chair into spin to save himself from the sarcastic nape. The last time he’d battled with it was in high school, what seemed like ages ago.

Kippei had been napping in the grass next to him with the back of his neck all visible and tempting.

“So you think you know where I can find myself?” he asked and Kippei stopped the chair with his strong legs. They were facing each other again but this time there was a confident smirk on his roommate’s face as he leaned his face closer.

“I don’t _think_ , I know. But yeah.”

The sense of needing to wait or see about it later wasn’t there, Senri felt and his heart was drumming against his chest like the rain against their window. He cleared his throat and still his voice came out strange to his own ears:

“Then, where?”

His eyes dropped to Kippei’s lips as his friend took his time before answering. He dreaded the words that could fall from them. _Psyche!_ or _Just kidding._ But this was Kippei. This guy could be coerced into horseplay but he didn’t play around with emotions. He wished he were able to see what sort of face his friend was making but he was sitting on his heels like a moose in front of lion, and Kippei’s lips stretched horizontally until they no longer covered his yellowish coffee teeth.

“Right here. With me.”

Senri’s vision grew as if he’d just burst out of a tunnel and he took in the positively silly grin on Kippei’s face. He couldn’t help but answer it with his own. His heart had burst into freaking fireworks. 

He grabbed the stupid face with both of his hands and kissed the guy. Being scared to start a relationship wasn’t his style and this wasn’t starting anything in the first place.

Just exploiting what was already there.

 

*

 

“So, tell me the story behind your hair.”

Kippei nearly choked on his sandwich and started coughing. His best friend reached out over the table to smack his back for him. Once he could breath again he clicked his tongue annoyedly and with large amount of shame.

“There’s nothing to tell. I was cutting it in front of a mirror in the toilet across the hall and the scissors started slipping.”

“Started slipping?” Chitose snorted affectionately, the way that made Kippei embarrassed just to look at him. “You didn’t think to stop closing the scissors when they started slipping?”

“Yeah, well. Not really.”

Now that it was mentioned, that would’ve been the logical course of action. He dug his teeth into the sandwich and imagined ways to wipe the pitying smirk from the other’s face.

“Poor Kippei,” Chitose cooed, then added: “But there’s still hope! Your brain might start growing soon.”

Kippei flipped him a bird and the guy laughed. He wasn’t so mad though. Chitose looked ridiculous laughing with his mouth open like that.

“Is it that obvious?” he asked after a while. Chitose had calmed down enough to answer without cracking up again. He shook his head.

“No, not really. Unless you know it’s there.”

Kippei breathed out in relief, then grinned a little.

“No, my brain. Or lack of there of.”

“You don’t _have_ a brain? Now that’s a surprise. How did you manage to get involved with me?”

“Oh please, as if I needed a brain for that.”

While still a bit unsure about this whole relationship status, Kippei felt good to be joking about it. It felt like nothing would change. There would just, hopefully, be more kissing and all that perverted stuff he had yet to get around trying. He finished his coffee and smirked.

“It stopped raining during the night. If you’re not scared of a wet court, let’s play a match. We still have time before my first lecture.”

Chitose rolled his eyes but got up anyway.

“Yeah. Sure.”


End file.
